Re: USB external drive size limitations?

2006-03-26 Thread Chandan Haldar

I faced the exact same problem recently with my 250GB
iOmega external harddisk with a single FAT32 partition
which I needed mounted on my FreeBSD 6.0 Release
system.  I needed this to be mounted rw, so the
MSDOSFS_LARGE option was no help.  After some
cajoling, iomega folks confirmed that partitioning the disk
into multiple partitions should present no issues (although
for some reason best known to themselves, on their support
website they explicitly discourage users doing this).

To cut the long story short, I chose to partition the 256GB
disk into 2 128GB FAT32 partitions.  Both the partitions
show up (as /dev/da*) and mount rw nicely on FreeBSD
(and also on Windoze as usual).

To be on the safe side, I moved the data back and forth
between my fixed harddisks and the external disk before
and after repartitioning the external HDD, but iomega said
that using content-preserving repartitioning software such
as partitionmagic should be possible to use without any
issues on their disk.

Chandan


JHorne wrote:


Well im fairly certain that my filesystem has less than a million files, its
mostly just large .iso files from my ftp server.  I can defiantly quickly
check it out against a windows computer before I plug it back in the next
time im at my colo.
 


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RE: USB external drive size limitations?

2006-03-25 Thread [EMAIL PROTECTED]@mgEDV.net

 Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system (fedora)
and
 now im going to have a fun time getting those files onto my new FreeBSD
 server!  Can someone recommend a course of action for me here?  Google
isn't
 really turning up anything interesting relating to size of external
drives.

some ideas:

check the fs-type  if possible the version of the fs on your usb-hdd
(maybe compat probs?)

try attaching the drive b4 you power-on the box and boot

try to explicitly (mount_xy and mount-args) mount the drive (ro!)

check if the builtin hdd inside your drive can be attached directly
on the ata/s-ata/whatever bus inside your machine; copy directly

attach your usb-hdd to a working machine, copy via lan

check for bios/fw-updates for your hw, maybe usb-support get's better

hth  good luck!

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Re: USB external drive size limitations?

2006-03-25 Thread Fabian Keil
Jonathan Horne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Last night I plugged in a 300GB Maxtor USB drive into my FreeBSD 6.0
 server (with a fat filesystem), and it told me it was too big!!

 Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system
 (fedora) and now im going to have a fun time getting those files onto
 my new FreeBSD server!  Can someone recommend a course of action for
 me here?  Google isn't really turning up anything interesting
 relating to size of external drives.
 
Do you already have options MSDOSFS_LARGE in your kernel?

Fabian
-- 
http://www.fabiankeil.de/


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Re: USB external drive size limitations?

2006-03-25 Thread Fabian Keil
Fabian Keil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Jonathan Horne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Last night I plugged in a 300GB Maxtor USB drive into my FreeBSD 6.0
  server (with a fat filesystem), and it told me it was too big!!
 
  Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system
  (fedora) and now im going to have a fun time getting those files
  onto my new FreeBSD server!  Can someone recommend a course of
  action for me here?  Google isn't really turning up anything
  interesting relating to size of external drives.
  
 Do you already have options MSDOSFS_LARGE in your kernel?

Forgot to mention that it isn't perfect. I believe the limitations
described in http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/relnotes-i386.html
are still true:

|The MSDOSFS_LARGE kernel option has been added to support FAT32 file
|systems bigger than 128GB. This option is disabled by default. It uses
|at least 32 bytes of kernel memory for each file on disk; furthermore
|it is only safe to use in certain controlled situations, such as
|read-only mount with less than 1 million files and so on. Exporting
|these large file systems over NFS is not supported.

Fabian
-- 
http://www.fabiankeil.de/


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RE: USB external drive size limitations?

2006-03-25 Thread JHorne
Well im fairly certain that my filesystem has less than a million files, its
mostly just large .iso files from my ftp server.  I can defiantly quickly
check it out against a windows computer before I plug it back in the next
time im at my colo.

Ok, so since im about to recompile and force myself to reboot, other than
the options SMP that I already added in, is there anything else I really
need to look at before I do it again?  What about the scheduler?  Is the ULE
over 4BSD really a big deal?  The article I read said that SMP machines
really prefer it, is that the case?

If there is anything else you would have wanted to teach the last new person
you instructed in the finer points of kernel compiling, but didn't... now's
your chance!!!

cheers,
jonathan

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fabian Keil
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:13 PM
To: Jonathan Horne
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: USB external drive size limitations?

Fabian Keil [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Jonathan Horne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Last night I plugged in a 300GB Maxtor USB drive into my FreeBSD 6.0
  server (with a fat filesystem), and it told me it was too big!!
 
  Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system
  (fedora) and now im going to have a fun time getting those files
  onto my new FreeBSD server!  Can someone recommend a course of
  action for me here?  Google isn't really turning up anything
  interesting relating to size of external drives.
  
 Do you already have options MSDOSFS_LARGE in your kernel?

Forgot to mention that it isn't perfect. I believe the limitations
described in http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/relnotes-i386.html
are still true:

|The MSDOSFS_LARGE kernel option has been added to support FAT32 file
|systems bigger than 128GB. This option is disabled by default. It uses
|at least 32 bytes of kernel memory for each file on disk; furthermore
|it is only safe to use in certain controlled situations, such as
|read-only mount with less than 1 million files and so on. Exporting
|these large file systems over NFS is not supported.

Fabian
-- 
http://www.fabiankeil.de/

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